40. The same reports will show that most children married before the age of eighteen (18) are girls. Thus in Mali, the girl boy ratio of marriage before age eighteen (18) is 72:1, Kenya 21:1, USA 8:1. 41. I attach hereto marked Annexure 'A' an article published by Dr Nawal M. Nour headed "Health Consequences of Child Marriage in Africa" published in www.cdc.gov/eid Vol12, No. 11 November 2006. 42. The point I thus make is that child marriages are thus widespread in Zimbabwe and elsewhere. 43. There is no question that child marnages are largely as a result of economic, cultural and social issues. Indeed in Zimbabwe it is well accepted that poverty is at the epicentre of causing early child marriages. Girls from indigent backgrounds are vulnerable to marriage because of the costs associated with education and the opportunity costs on parents and households of maintaining and up keeping unemployed unmarried female children. 44. However, as will be shown below, it becomes a vicious circle in that the young girls who marry early and often in poor families are then forced to produce young children in a sea of poverty and the cycle begins aga1n. Put simply child marriage fosters poverty and cyclical reproduction of poverty as girls who marry young, in an uneducated environment with few opportunities, continue reproducing the same. 45. Early child marriages are also a product of patriarchy. African culture, and indeed South East Asian cultures, devalue women and treat women as objects. A young girl child is thus treated as an object whilst if the are little resources available it is the boy child who is sent to school. 12